Love Calls Us Out of Ourselves

The Church is filled with treasures that should not be secret – an abundance of beautiful, powerful documents that may be long but are fairly easy to read and surely worth your time.

One of those is Pope Leo XIV’s first teaching document, Dilexi Te, “I have loved you,” an apostolic exhortation on the Church’s love for the poor. The title comes from a passage in the Book of Revelation, a passage in which the Lord assures the marginalized of His love for them, for they have kept His word.

As we know, God can only love the poor and marginalized through each one of us, His sons and daughters. We are called to look around, to be attentive to the needs of others. Our love must be enfleshed, it must be concrete. Pope Leo reminds us of this: “Our love and our deepest convictions need to be continually cultivated, and we do so through our concrete actions. Remaining in the realm of ideas and theories, while failing to give them expression through frequent and practical acts of charity, will eventually cause even our most cherished hopes and aspirations to weaken and fade away.”

As we approach Thanksgiving, Advent and the Christmas season, these words should resound in our hearts. The accumulation of goods is not how we best show love. Christian love calls us out of ourselves and invites us to encounter the other. At Mary, Queen of Peace, you will hear of many opportunities in the coming weeks to encounter God in the needy and marginalized. Information will be forthcoming on our Thanksgiving and Christmas outreach plans, a way to make sure our love for God’s poor is made real. We will also have an event after the 11:30 Mass on Sunday, November 2 – BLAST: Believing, Learning and Serving Together. Believing and Learning are not enough; service is the concrete outcome of our love for God.

As a reminder, the Holy Father challenges us to love all of God’s children, no matter who they are, what they do, how they speak, or where they live. “Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”

Let us be the Church that the world needs today; let’s be a parish that knows no enemies but knows only how to love, for it is Christ who reminds each one of us: “I have loved you” (Rev 3:9).

To read Dilexi Te and other papal and Vatican documents, visit Vatican.va.